Apex Digital performed an audit on customer’s product information architecture, processes and practices. The assessment identified problems accumulated over the years, provided recommendations for short-term actions and outlined a path for long-term development towards customer’s business goals.

Rigid design in a changing business environment

The customer has had their PIM system since early 2010s and it was designed against the business objectives of that time. Business landscape had evolved since, but the system has not been revamped at any point. Customer wants to meet the requirements of the changed business environment, to grow their market share and to expand to new business models, but by doing so they have encountered the following challenges.

1. Integrating new suppliers and external product information sources

How to integrate new suppliers and other external data sources to their PIM system in a flexible and agile way? Currently adding new suppliers and their products to the PIM system is a slow and laborious process.

2. Expanding to new business models and growing the current product assortment

The definition of the product in the PIM system reflects the original requirements, and is not applicable with the growing data complexity and volumes of data required for both business and regulatory purposes.

3. Static product information process

The product information process reflects the original business goals, and does not provide the flexibility required for adding new types of products or expanding into new business models dynamically. Instead of the current linear process, the customer needs to be able to add new dimensions of data requirements dynamically for utilizing the product information in new publishing channels.

4. Product information quality

Errors in product information are found and reported mostly by the customers, not caught by the product information process. Customer feedback has shown that one of the limiting factors for customer conversion is the lacking quality of the product information.

Expert assessment and guidance

The assessment was executed in three stages:

1. Stage

The first stage focused on the core systems involved in creating and enriching new products with the intent to create a clear picture of the current system architecture and product information processes.

Key issues:

• What is the customers definition of product, and how the product is modelled into PIM system
• Where and how the product information is sourced
• In addition to PIM, which systems are involved in the creation and enrichment process and what are their responsibilities
• How the data is validated in the different steps of the process
• Amount of manual work required vs automation in the different steps of the process
• What is in the development roadmap for these core systems

2. Stage

The second stage added the downstream systems to assess the data distribution and utilization challenges within the organization.

Key issues:

• Identifying the systems that currently utilize product information
• Downstream requirements for product information
• Daily problems / challenges with product information in its current state
• Roadmap for downstream systems product information utilization
• Roadmap for future product information integrations

3. Stage

The third stage focused on product information management process and the different user roles, which currently utilize or would benefit from product information in their daily tasks.

Key issues:

• What information is being utilized / processed in their tasks
• Is all necessary information available / accessible currently
• Amount of manually performed tasks
• Challenges and problems performing the tasks

In each stage the findings were analyzed and reviewed in workshops.

Analysis and action plan

The analysis shed light on the pain points and bottlenecks of the current PIM system design and the product information management processes and practices. With Apex Digital help the customer can make informed decisions on how to prioritize the development targets and improve their product information management as a whole to achieve their business goals.

The customer was provided guidelines for:

• Future-proofing the architecture
• Pinpointing the missing capabilities for building more comprehensive processes
• Task automation and effort allocation to more important tasks
• Development targets for utilizing AI as a part of the product information processes
• Short-term development targets for immediate results
• Prioritized long-term development targets

It was a pleasure to see how enthusiastically the customer representatives participated in the workshops and interviews and how many ideas started to emerge when we moved from solving current problems to planning for the future. This is what we do at Apex Digital.